Sunday, 26 January 2014

When famine struck Bangalore

It was sometime in 1877 and India
was reeling under a terrible famine. The failure of the monsoons in 1875 and
1876 had led to a prolonged drought in south India and people were finding it
difficult to make ends meet.

The MysoreKingdom
and other parts of what is Karnataka today too suffered from the lack of rains.
There was no food and cattle was dying everywhere. The prices of food grains
and other commodities had shot up and people in MysoreState
were suffering.

The severe famine in MysoreState
which commenced in December 1876 was the result of the failure of two successive monsoons in 1875 and 1876. Bangalore was a little more fortunate tan other places of MysoreState
and south India
as it had fairly adequate stocks of food grains and water.

Seeing Bangalore
as a much better option, large number of people from Madras Presidency (as
present day Tamil was known then), Hyderabad,
Travancore, Bombay Presidency and almost all the districts of north Karnataka migrated to Bangalore.

The migrants found Bangalore a much better
place to live in. The Cantonment was a sprawling city, while the Pete was a
prosperous native town.

This was the period when
Chief Commissioner C.B.Saunders was administering the State of Mysore and Dr.
J.H.Orr was the President of both Bangalore Pete and CantonmentMunicipality.

The huge influx of people led
to inflation like situation in Bangalore.
The prices of food grains shot up four times its usual price and rents too took
an upward swing. Vegetables and fruits too became costlier.

Thargurpet, by then, had
become the grain market of Bangalore.
Hundreds of shops lined the lanes and bylanes of the locality dealing
wholsesale and even in retail food grains.

Many people who had migrated
to Bangalore
from other parts zeroed in on Thargurpet to feed themselves,. While a lucky few
managed to get work, others lazed about and took to begging to feed themselves
and their families.

By July 1877, the Bangalore municipality recorded 25,000 famine immigrants
to Bangalore.

Though there was no dearth of
food grains in Bangalore,
traders and merchants made handsome profits, quoting higher prices. Bangalore also became the
nodal centre for distributing food grains to other parts of the State. Every
day, 400 tonnes to 500 tonnes of food grains came to Bangalore
by rail from Madras.

The food grains and other
relief materials were dispatched by rail and road and the Government of India nominated
Richard Temple as Special Commissioner to monitor such work from Bangalore.

To tackle the situation in Bangalore, the municipality and the Government appointed
specially designated people wearing white and blue caps to identify weak and starving people and bring them to relief
kitchens which were set up across Bangalore.

The Government set up three
kitchens under the direct supervision of the General Famine Relief committee.
These kitchens fed the migrants twice a day in return for work as they were
able to perform.

The Government placed Captain
Healey and Lieutenant P.E. Anderson in charge of relief work in the Pete and cantonment
respectively. They supervised the distribution of grains to the poor and also
helped people to get back their jobs. These two British officials were assisted
in their work by local volunteers. A majority of the volunteers were clerks in
Government offices in Bangalore.

Local industrialists, philanthropists
and leading citizens of Bangalore
also helped out by providing food and shelter and even collecting money. Rai
Bahadur Arcot Narayanaswami Mudaliar started a woolen mill where boys were
provided with food, clothes and taught to work.

Brahmo Samaaj and the leading trader of Bangalore, Ele Mallappa
Shetty fed 30,000 people daily.

Unfortunately, the magnitude
of the famine and drought was so severe that thousands died due to starvation
and malnutrition in the State. Bangalore
too was not spared such deaths. During August 1877, the average number of dead on
the streets of Bangalore
was 20 and it shot up to 40 in September. In Cantonment, British soldiers were
aghast to find bodies of people, including children, lying exposed and partly
devoured by animals.

The Government took up
several public works like desilting and repair of Dharmambudi tank and the
construction of an additional reservoir adjoining and forming a part of the Sampangi
tank. The existing tanks dried up and the Government was forced to dig new
tanks and lakes.

Hundreds of weavers and loom workers of Bangalore who had sold their looms worked as
labourers in Sampangi tank. Hundreds of craftsmen too sold off their implements
and started working in relief works for their daily bread.

The relief works picked up
when the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, visited Bangalore in September 1877. He reviewed the
famine and drought relief works and appointed Sir Charles Elliot as Famine
Commissioner to carry out relief operation more effectively.

Lord Lytton also sanctioned
the work of laying of railway line between Bangalore
and Mysore.

Thankfully, the drought came
to an end when rains lashed Bangalore and other
parts of MysoreState
in September and October. However, the relief works continued till November
1878. By then, the devastating famine had resulted in more than seven lakh
deaths in MysoreState.

Today, this event is called “The
Great Famine of 1876–78.” It is also called as the Southern India famine of
1876–78 or the Madras
famine of 1877.

The famine began in 1876 and
affected south and south west India
first and then spread north and also to some regions of the Central and United
provinces. The famine ultimately covered an area of 257,000 square miles
(670,000 km2) and directly affected 58,500,000 people. The death toll from this
famine is estimated between 5.5 million to 29 million.

Many say that the Great
Famine may have been caused by an intense drought resulting in crop failure in
the Deccan. Another reason is the foolish
decision of Lord Lytton to export huge amounts of food grains to England at the
cost of local consumption.

The Great Famine completely
shattered the British air of superiority. They had taken over the MysoreKingdom
and in 1873-74 they were thinking a State with surplus in all fields back to
the Maharaja.

Their slow response to the famine
hastened the rendition or the return of power to the Maharaja apart from
exposing their sham of all-round development and a State rich in coffers. The
late relief measures cost the Government Rs. 140 lakhs and this was nothing
compared to the losses of revenue. Moreover, the Government was forced to
borrow Rs. 80 lakhs from the Government of India to tide over the financial
crisis.

The famine in the MysoreKingdom
is supposed to have left more than a lakh dead and the inadequate and
half-baked measures put in place by the British officials left Lord Lytton fuming.
Even, Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, despaired of the lack of proper and sustained
relief measures. He as moved to write, that there was “cause for anxiety in the
general administration of the State” and that the Chief Commissioner Saunders “was not
in control of the administration.”

1 comment:

Now people talk of Organic farming.How can we produce enough food if we resort to organic farming which was the only kind of farming till 1960,s.To tide over the food scarcity we resorted to inorganic farming in the decade of 1960,s.Other wise we were depending on PL-480 of USA,which was supplying food to India till 1967-which gave famous gossip -SHIP TO MOUTH.It is only Green revolution augmented food reserves,and self sufficiency.Now we can tide over famines,droughts by inorganic farming.